When Fox News Channel White House correspondent Peter Doocy asked White House press secretary Jen Psaki during a press briefing on Wednesday whether President Joe Biden has ever visited America’s southern border, Psaki said she would need to check.
“Has President Biden ever been to the southern border?” Doocy inquired.
“In his life?” Psaki asked.
“Yes,” Doocy responded.
Psaki said she would need to “look back in my history books and check the times he’s been to the southern border.”
Doocy said that “we cannot find any record of him visiting the border as president, vice president, senator, or even as a concerned citizen,” after searching “all morning.” Doocy inquired: “Why would that be?”
“I can check and see when the last time, or when he may have been,” Psaki answered. She then pressed Doocy about why he was posing the question.
Doocy said that Biden “makes a point” to visit areas impacted by disasters to see what those communities need so that he will be equipped with an informed point of view to determine policy. He then asked why Biden is not heading to Del Rio, Texas to survey the situation there.
“Well first of all Peter, I think the situation at the border is the result of a broken system,” Psaki said. “And the president certainly relies on his experience. So, whether it was the work he did to address root causes as vice president, his efforts when he was in the Senate to support comprehensive immigration reform … he uses all of his experiences to inform how he governs, how he approaches challenges.”
Biden’s political career at the national level spans nearly five decades. He served as a U.S. Senator from the state of Delaware for 36 years, then went on to serve as vice president for eight years alongside President Barack Obama, and has now ascended to the presidency.
In another example of the ongoing crisis along the nation’s southern border, thousands of Haitian migrants and others congregated near a bridge in Del Rio, Texas. Some people have been deported on flights to Haiti. But many of the Haitian migrants are getting released into America, according to two U.S. officials, the Associated Press reported. Here’s more from the AP:
Haitians have been freed on a “very, very large scale” in recent days, one official said Tuesday. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter and thus spoke on condition of anonymity, put the figure in the thousands.
Many have been released with notices to appear at an immigration office within 60 days, an outcome that requires less processing time from Border Patrol agents than ordering an appearance in immigration court and points to the speed at which authorities are moving.
According to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, there were 208,887 southwest land border encounters during the month of August, which marked only a slight decline from the 213,534 in July.
Peter Doocy asks Psaki about White House refusal to give migrant numbers
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